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This year I am remembering the six members of the BOXALL family recorded on the war memorial in the parish church at West Dean (near Chichester), Sussex.

Sidney BOXALL’s full name was Sidney Charles BOXALL (although some records have him as Sydney Charles BOXALL) and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website provides us with the valuable information that Sidney was the “Son of Arthur and Charlotte Boxall, of 84, The Warren, West Dean, Chichester” and he died aged 22 on the 18th April 1918.

Sidney Charles was baptised on the 5th April 1896 at St. Andrew’s Church, West Dean and was the second youngest of Arthur and Charlotte’s five children. His younger brother was Frederick Henry BOXALL who I wrote about on Wednesday. Sidney, in common with most of the BOXALLs in West Dean, worked as a farm labourer.

Although Sidney’s service record has survived it is very brief, only six pages in total, and two of those relate to the return of his personal effects to his father, so unfortunately it doesn’t give a lot of detail on his military service.

He appears to have enlisted on the 20th January 1916 at Chichester, Sussex with the 2nd Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment (regimental number: G/8597), although his medical examination took place a couple of months earlier on the 18th November 1915.

His service record provides no further details on his military service other than his entitlement to the British War Medal and Victory Medal, and the fact that he was killed in action in France on the 18th April 1918. If time permitted I could probably have checked the battalions war diary to find out exactly where they were and what they were doing at the time.

As well as West Dean war memorial Sidney Charles is also remembered at Woburn Abbey Cemetery, Cuinchy, France.